Acardia - Sun's only reseller dedicated to the developer community

New Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 3 Boosts Virtualization Flexibility

Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software 3 provides new enhancements and features to help companies maximize their IT infrastructure utilization and improve manageability of desktop deployments. Sun VDI Software 3 offers ground-breaking VDI storage economics, built-in virtualization capabilities, and support for a wide variety of virtual desktop operating systems. The open architecture of Sun VDI Software 3 now gives users access to a broader choice of client devices and virtualization hosts -- increasing flexibility, management efficiency and data security.

Sun VDI Software 3 represents a seamless solution, leveraging core open source technologies including Sun's Open Storage, OpenSolaris, VirtualBox and MySQL. With Sun VDI Software 3, customers can deploy a number of virtual desktop operating systems, including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2000, OpenSolaris and Ubuntu, and access these operating systems from a variety of client devices -- such as traditional PCs or Macs, energy-efficient Sun Ray thin clients, or thin clients from other vendors. In addition, to host virtual desktop environments, IT architects can opt to use the improved integration with VMware Infrastructure, leverage Sun built-in virtualization, or use a mixture of the two.

"The open architecture of our Sun VDI Software 3 creates a new dimension of choice and integration with Sun's high-performing Open Storage systems," said Jim McHugh, Vice President of Datacenter Marketing, Sun Microsystems. "Customers can now increase the utilization of existing IT assets; gain greater flexibility in client, desktop operating systems and host virtualization; increase scalability and simplify management; and mitigate the #1 issue facing all VDI deployments -- the cost of storage. In today's volatile economy, these advantages and capabilities can bring significant benefits to virtualization customers."

Sun VDI Software 3 has exceptional management capabilities, resulting in lower equipment costs, less energy consumption, reduced system cooling requirements, simplified system administration and reduced e-waste. Since desktops are centrally hosted, only the display is sent to the client device; critical data never leaves the corporate network and can be managed and backed up by IT. Moreover, built-in Sun Ray technology support takes advantage of the excellent performance and inherent security features of Sun Ray thin clients, which contain no resident operating system or applications -- making them virtually immune to client-side viruses.

Additional Sun VDI Software 3 features include:

Integration with Solaris ZFS and Open Storage: Enables superior data integrity for business continuity and exceptional data throughput in an economical storage footprint with simplified management design. When coupled with a Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System or other Open Storage architecture, Sun VDI Software 3 can significantly reduce storage consumption and costs.
Expanded VMware support: Enables customers to rapidly and efficiently scale larger deployments of Sun VDI Software paired with VMware Infrastructure.
Active Directory support: Permits customers to easily assign virtual desktops to users in Active Directory.
Built-in support for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) clients: Allows customers to connect directly to a Sun VDI Software 3 server from nearly any RDP-enabled device, without installing any software on the client.
Streamlined, simplified installation: Provides a single installer for the core components to reduce complexity.

Sun VDI Software 3 is available for purchase immediately and a free trial of the software can be downloaded by clicking here. For more details, please contact Acardia on 0845 230 1055.

Published: 26 March 2009